I read the Dev’s Watercooler post on the planned stat changes for MoP with interest, in particular the part pertaining to resilience.

We are renaming this stat to “Defense (PvP)” or possibly “PvP Defense.” All players will have 30% base Defense, the same way all characters have some base Stamina.

This is a good thing. Right now the gulf between those with PvP gear and those without is too big. Even if you PvP en route to 85 so you have honor to spend once you ding, plus you invest in some of the craftable gear, you will fall over dead as soon as someone in 403 or higher gear glares in your direction. Can’t say I’m hugely taken with the name though, what’s wrong with “resilience”, it’s got a good solid sound to it.

It might also help levelling in pvp, if players start out with it. Although I wonder it’s just something which we’ll learn at a certain level, possibly somewhere between 80 and 85. So that’s the giving over and done with, now on to the taking.

PvP gear will have Defense on it, as well as a new stat, “Power (PvP).” Power increases the damage you do to other players as well as the healing you do to other players in PvP situations.

By providing a damage bonus, they’re negating at least a part of the 30 percent innate damage reduction, i.e. taking away what they just gave. I understand why they’re doing it, after all without it, PvE with it’s higher item level would more attractive for certain classes but this potentially could also increase the gap between the haves and the have nots. The haves will have high innate damage from their high level gear, a further 20/30 percent damage bonus to that high damage and a high damage reduction. Whilst Mr “I have just entered PvP” will have weak damage, no damage bonus and only have base damage reduction. It’s not an issue at the start of the expansion but once we’re a season or two in, I wonder if we’ll be seeing the same issues that exist at the moment. If they stick to the same model we currently have, i.e. a crafted set, a basic honor set and then two tiers of conquest point sets, then a few seasons into the expansion, the person in the crafted set will still get blown up very quickly by players in the top end conquest one.

Obviously we don’t know how exactly how it’s going to work yet but one solution would be that regardless of set (whether it’s crafted, bought with honor or conquest points), the damage reduction component should work out the same. With the benefits of higher item level stuff being more damage, more healing, more health, more pvp power. That way, at least Mr Brand New PvPer will be heal-able and a lot less squishy.

PvP gear will be lower in item level than PvE gear of an equivalent tier, however the Power and Defense stats will make sure that PvP gear is more powerful in PvP (both offensively and defensively) than PvE gear. In our budgeting system, the PvP stats will be free rather than causing other stats, such as Strength or haste, to be smaller as a result of including Power or Defense.

This I see more as a clarification than a change. At the moment resilience costs us a chunk of our PvP item budget meaning that if we could compare a 403 pvp piece with a equivalent pve one, there would be a noticeable difference in stats once resilience is removed from the equation.

This should also hopefully stop certain classes using large quantities of PvE gear in random battlegrounds.

One potential pitfall though is that currently, stamina and armour are very linear stat to your item level. A helm of x item level, regardless of whether it’s a dungeon drop or a reward from PvP has the same amount of stamina and armour. Unless they are weighted differently in MoP, there is a risk that you’ll drop health and armour when you put on your PvP gear.

The goal of this change is to make it easier for a PvP player to participate in PvE, or for a PvE player to get started in PvP. Currently, we feel it is too large a barrier to go from one to the other, and the result has been that we see more and more players choosing to focus exclusively on only PvP or PvE. In earlier expansions, it was more feasible to use PvE gear in Arenas or Battlegrounds until you acquired the more useful PvP gear. The same was true of being able to use your PvP gear in a dungeon or raid until you acquired something better.

I have my doubts about this. Yes, it was hard for brand new 85s to enter PvP but with the justice points to honor and vice versa conversions, I don’t think it was difficult gearing up for entry PvE or PvP once you had a foothold on the other. Sure, unless you had kind friends it’s not the sort of gear which lets you straight into raiding hardmodes but it’s more than enough for starting out with heroic 5 mans and then building up to raiding. Which let’s face it, is all this change will allow anyway. Due to the lower item level of PvP gear, you won’t be farming that and waltzing into heroic modes and nor should you. Yes, I’m sure (prejudice of the player base allowing) it will suffice in 5 mans and probably LFR but that’s it.

All in all, I’m fairly positive about the changes although without actual figures to play around with, it’s hard to do anything other than surmise. However, given how bad PvP currently is for the people attempting to break into it, I’m going to look on the positive side and say MoP can’t possibly be worse.

2 Responses

I see it a little bit like an arms race – each tier you’re going to get a certain percent buff from PvP Power, and likely an equivalent buff in PvP Defense, so that if you’re geared you’ll wind up somewhere around the base 30% resilience. If you aren’t geared for PvP and participate in BGs, you’ll have something left over from that 30% against PvP attackers, but not a lot – but you’re still better off than in the current system. In PvP you’ll have some Resilience – 10%? 20%? like you said, we need numbers – but if someone comes up to you in PvE gear and picks a fight, you’re going to have the full 30%.

I also see this as a good thing for leveling through BGs. One of the issue I found was once you tipped into an expansion bracket, any of the PvP gear you had (which might not be much anyway) was so under powered in comparison to the new greens – but the new greens just left you in a ditch if you didn’t get the 1st hit.

Hopefully that transition will be smoother when carrying innate Defense (PvP) – and yeah I dislike the name too.